Thursday, August 29, 2013

But The World Will Rejoice (part 2 of 2)

Believers are called to, at the least (if they have not personally
experienced suffering and shame), empathize and sympathize with those that are suffering,
making the cares and concerns (troubles and suffering) of the fatherless and
the widows (and those in prison or in need of clothing or a cup of water) their
own cares and concerns. Believers are to enter into this suffering and
know that it is worthwhile, and know that their work will remain, precisely
because they serve the one hailed as the risen King who endured suffering and
gross humiliation, overcame it in every respect, has conquered the world, and
is ruling it even now, even though this often would not appear to be the
case. Does this view of suffering and conquering not seem to be more in
line with the Spirit of the Word?

With this said, how should one
approach this issue of the world rejoicing? Is it negative or
positive? Does the world rejoice because
Jesus has been removed and “the world” (when viewed through the lens of “the
church versus the world”) can now go on its merry way in defiance of the
Creator, or is it something altogether different? Perhaps it is
worthwhile to see it in the positive light of the Creator God’s intentions for
His once-good-though-fallen-creation?

The Apostle Paul, based on His understanding of the
Christ-event and its implications (perhaps relying on the oral version of the
Gospel accounts, but certainly offering his thoughts on the subject prior to
the written biographies of Jesus) writes in Romans about the creation (the
world) itself, having been subjected to futility through no fault of its own,
groaning and suffering under the bondage of decay, while awaiting its
liberation from the same (8:21-22).

When Jesus went away into death, His disciples were sad
because they did not expect a Resurrection.
As expressed in the narrative, nobody did. Somehow though, as
implied by Paul, the world (the creation) itself knew that with Jesus’ death, a
Resurrection was coming, and it rejoiced that its new day was about to
dawn. Yes, Jesus’ Resurrection marked the beginning of the covenant God’s
new creation, and the inauguration of the kingdom of heaven on earth. A
new world had begun. In this world Jesus reigned, having conquered the
power of death that had ruled the world since Adam, by making it possible for
those that lived with a trusting allegiance to Him as cosmic ruler, to overcome
any and all fear of death (or suffering and shame), grounded in the hope of
their own resurrection into the world that Jesus now inhabited---the world of
the coming together of heaven and earth.

To convey this, Jesus uses the
imagery of a woman giving birth, experiencing pain and distress because the
time has come for her to deliver (John 16:21). Is it not interesting that
Jesus, in speaking of His death and hoped-for Resurrection, in the expectation
that His Resurrection, if it happened, was going to mark the beginning of a new
age, resorts to speaking of the pain of childbirth that was said to have been
introduced into the world because of the fall, thus linking the climactic act
of world history with the veritable beginning of the story? The woman
giving birth groans and suffers, but when the “new human being has been born
into the world” (16:21b), she forgets her suffering and she rejoices.

Is this not what happened when Jesus came forth from the
tomb? Was not a new human being born into the world? Indeed, something
more than what is thought of as a human being was born into the world.
Affirming that thought, those who served as eyewitnesses of this exalted
individual struggled to find the words to adequately convey what they were
experiencing in their interactions with this one that came to be understood to
be the firstfruits of the new creation---a being now fully and truly
human---with a physical, resurrected body fully animated by the Spirit of the
Creator God, bearing the divine image as that God had intended for the being
that was intended to be the crowning glory of His creation.